"In the beginning was the word”: text and voice as unifying elements in Maderna's Satyricon

Benedetta Zucconi

2022-01-01

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Abstract

This chapter examines the compositional process of Bruno Maderna's opera Satyricon (1973) and challenges the conventional wisdom that views this work as fragmentary and an example of pop art musical theatre. By means of an exhaustive examination of the preparatory schemes and sketches preserved at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, it becomes evident that, despite the diversity of outcomes, a singular compositional principle emerges, which is consistently oriented towards the primacy of the intonated text and its intelligibility. A focus on the analysis of the diverse musical and stylistic solutions employed by Maderna in Satyricon will serve to substantiate this assertion, aligning with the principle espoused by Maderna himself on numerous occasions, which posits the indivisible bond between text and music in the representative art of ancient Greece.